The Beast Arises

There was little sense of scale, but Maskar appeared to be looking into the eyes of the most immense ork warboss. The creature was so mature, so vast and bloated, its features were distorted. Broken tusks like tree trunks jutted from the cliff edge of its lower jaw. It was staring right out of the screen with tiny, gleaming yellow eyes, its jaw moving.

‘That bastard thing is aboard the moon,’ Heth said. ‘It’s their leader. I think he’s the size of a damn hab-block, Maskar. Saints of Terra, there hasn’t been an ork boss that massive since Ullanor. I mean, they just don’t develop to that size any more. Look, look. In the foreground? Those are greenskin warriors. They look like children.’

‘Save us,’ Maskar murmured.

‘Too late, my friend,’ said Heth. ‘Look at the bastard. Look at him. Those noises we can hear? The noise bursts? It’s him. His voice. He’s talking to us.’

Heth pointed to another display, one that showed the glaring face on the surface of the moon.

‘Look. See how the mechanical face moves? It’s working in sync with that bastard thing. Look, the lips part and close at the same time. That’s amplifying his voice, turning his vocalisation into that infrasonic signal.’

Maskar felt the ship jolt hard as its shields took more hits.

‘Oh, hellsteeth!’ Heth moaned suddenly. He spotted something new.

Other portals had opened in the surface of the attack moon: three large circles like giant crater rims or the red storm spot on Jupiter. From them, vast, glowing beams of energy were projecting down onto the surface of Ardamantua. Within seconds, they could see something dark and blotchy flowing up the beams into the attack moon.

Heth ramped up the magnification.

It was rock. Planetary matter. The attack moon was aiming immense gravity beams at Ardamantua and harvesting its mass, sucking billions of tonnes of physical matter and mineral content from the crust and mantle.

‘What the hell is it doing?’ asked Heth.

‘I think…’ Maskar began. ‘I think it might be refuelling.’

The attack moon clearly didn’t require all the material it was swallowing to replenish its mass ratios. Huge chunks of impacted mineral deposits began spitting out of the moon’s spaceward surface. The moon was manufacturing meteors and firing them at the Imperial ship positions using immense gravitic railguns. The Agincourt was blown in two by a direct strike from a rock projectile half its size. A huge chunk of quartz and iron travelling at six times the speed of sound raked the portside flank of the grand cruiser Dubrovnic and ripped away half its active shields.

Heth was lost for words.

‘We’ve… We’ve beaten them before, sir,’ Maskar said. It was all he could find to say.

‘What?’

‘The greens, sir. We’ve always beaten them before. Even at Ullanor…’

‘The Emperor was with us, then, Maskar,’ Heth replied darkly. ‘And the damned primarchs. It was a different time, a different age. An age of gods. Damn right we stopped them then. But they’ve grown strong again, stronger than ever, and we’ve grown weak. The Emperor’s gone, His beloved sons too. But the greenskins… Throne! They’ve come just six damned weeks shy of Terra. No warning! No damned warning at all! They’ve never been this close! They’ve got technological adaptations we’ve never seen before, not even on bloody Ullanor…. gravitation manipulation! Subspace tunnelling! Gross teleportation… whole planetary bodies, man! And they’ve all but exterminated one of the most able Chapters of Space Marines in one strike!’

‘The Emperor protects,’ Maskar said.

‘He used to,’ said Heth. ‘But we’re the only ones here today.’

Thirty-Two

Ardamantua

There would be no glory. Daylight knew that now. He had been foolish to expect it and wrong to crave it. A warrior of the Adeptus Astartes did not go to war for glory. War was duty. Only duty.

He had yearned for reinstatement for such a long time. Like all the wall-brethren, passing their silent and lonely years of vigil on the Palace walls, embodying the notion of Imperial Fists resilience, he had secretly and bitterly mourned the deprivation. He had yearned for so long, even to the point, on some dark days, when he had almost wished for a threat to come to Terra, or another civil strife to ignite, just so he could defend his wall and test his mettle again.

When the call had finally and unbelievably come, he had armoured himself without hesitation and left his station on Daylight Wall to go to the side of his Chapter.

Making that journey, he hadn’t been able to help himself. He hadn’t thought of duty.

He had thought of glory.